Top 100 Government Fear Quotes
#1. Liberty is the act of making the Government Fear
what you KNOW!
Faith Brashear
#2. Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!
Thomas Jefferson
#3. This is how best to effect change. If you reiterate the same fears and the same sensible measures with proper augmentation enough times, even difficult decisions will begin to seem like the only justifiable solutions.
Olli Jalonen
#4. The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.
Thomas Jefferson
#5. To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.
Richard Henry Lee
#6. Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.
Philip G. Zimbardo
#7. Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from ... instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. The account of how a form of American slavery persisted into the twentieth century, embraced by the U.S. economic system and abided at all levels of government, offered a concrete answer to that fear for the first time.
Douglas A. Blackmon
#9. Any government which fears freedom of speech and expression, should fear the internet more.
Robert Black
#10. There may be room in government service for the altruist and the iconoclast, but I have yet to see one who was not treated as an oddity at best and at worst an object of suspicion and fear.
James Lee Burke
#11. The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#12. When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.
Noah Webster
#13. I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.
Glenn Greenwald
#14. Obviously the government of [Mussolini's] time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler 's Germany rather than opposing it ... The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well.
Silvio Berlusconi
#15. The mighty edifice of Government science dominated the scene in the middle of the 20th century as a Gothic cathedral dominated a 13th century landscape. The work of many hands over many years, it universally inspired admiration, wonder and fear.
A. Hunter Dupree
#16. The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.
James Bovard
#17. After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.
Edward Snowden
#18. There are over 170,000 pages of regulations in Washington, D.C. I want to streamline the rules in the federal government to basically allow businesses to grow without fear of burdensome federal regulations. That's a passion to me, regulatory reform.
Jason T. Smith
#19. Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
Wendell Phillips
#20. The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.
James K. Polk
#21. The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night.
Edward Snowden
#22. The US government's most acute fear is that other countries are going to follow the Cuban example. They want everybody to know that if you follow this example we will attack you in every way that we can.
Assata Shakur
#23. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
Adam Smith
#24. TRUTH is the true victim today. Truth has become the politically incorrect "No-No" born from fear of government, school peer and/or family pressures and penalties, or just plain evasion, lying, cheating, and/or corruption-laden behavior on personal and business levels.
Alexandra York
#25. I have an institutional fear of big government. I have an institutional opposition to bureaucracy.
Rush Limbaugh
#26. Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off.
Thomas Sowell
#27. When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
#28. People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government ... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
Charles W. Colson
#29. The main cause of poverty or financial struggle is fear and ignorance, not the economy or the government or the rich.
Robert Kiyosaki
#30. Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen. - Darwi Odrade
Frank Herbert
#31. The biggest fear a corporate government has is that the masses will refuse to work.
Steven Magee
#32. With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral.
James Bovard
#33. Fear is what created the monster in the room, and in order to overcome the many problems and enslavements that we have today, it is not about getting rid of the monster, but about getting rid of the fear.
Evita Ochel
#34. Do not fear or misunderstand when the Government say they are looking to our defences. I give you my word that there will be no great armaments.
Stanley Baldwin
#35. Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
Thomas Jefferson
#36. Coercion by government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now its most common attribute.
Philip K. Howard
#37. What do you mean by sound government?'
Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'
Then we haven't got sound government.
P.D. James
#38. When the City of Goleta incorporated about 10 years ago, its founders took pains to exclude Isla Vista from the boundaries for fear that UCSB students would become enfranchised, take over the government, and enact some form of rent control.
Anonymous
#39. The paranoid fear of government is an extremist position, and every one of us ought to say that
Patricia Schroeder
#40. The point of Political Correctness is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself. (The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
#41. The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security ... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.
Baruch Spinoza
#42. I don't think a system or a government should fear critical opinions or views. Only by heeding those critical views would it be possible for us to further improve our work and make further progress.
Wen Jiabao
#43. Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics
Kurt Vonnegut
#44. A government or an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear, and consequently has nothing to conceal;
Thomas Paine
#45. You can't write novels without a touch of paranoia. I'm paranoid as an act of good citizenship, concerned about what the powerful people are up to.
Kurt Vonnegut
#46. When we do not understand something, a common reaction is to fear it. In government, this is the usual, and encouraged, reaction. The reaction to the gig economy has been no different, and this growing fear has unfortunately turned into a legislative bloodbath.
John McAfee
#47. Part of the reason that the government's fear mongering is succeeding is because so many people are so ignorant, that it is easier for government to frighten people in submission.
James Bovard
#48. The corporation that shrinks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive.
Theodore Roosevelt
#50. Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.
Penn Jillette
#51. We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
Chris Patten
#52. Our government is founded upon the intelligence of the people. I for one do not despair of the republic. I have great confidence in the virtue of the great majority of the people, and I cannot fear the result.
Andrew Jackson
#53. If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.
Thomas Jefferson
#54. Lack of knowledge and skills, laziness, gluttony, over-indulgence, lustiness, anger, fear, greed and misuse of knowledge, power and designation are the sources of corruption in the government employees.
Dev Dantreliya
#55. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.
Jon Meacham
#56. According to these new rules, the U.S. government was free to use the methods it had developed in the 1950s under layers of secrecy and deniability - only now it was out in the open, without fear of prosecution.
Naomi Klein
#57. No government which governs by the use of force can survive except by force. There is no going back because force begets force and the perpetrators of crimes live in fear that they might become victims in their turn.
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
#58. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.
Ronald Reagan
#59. The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.
Anthony Burgess
#60. Washington, under Democrats and Republicans, has a profoundly neurotic attitude toward 'the people.' It is built on equal parts of suspicion, loathing, fear, respect and dependence.
Meg Greenfield
#61. As an Auyana man living in New Guinea under the Pax Australiana put it, "Life was better since the government came" because "a man could now eat without looking over his shoulder and could leave his house in the morning to urinate without fear of being shot.
Steven Pinker
#62. In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue.
Samuel Williams
#63. Government, which does not and did not grant us our rights, must not now seek to deny them by using fear as its justification.
Malcolm Wallop
#64. I have been in Congress for more than a half century. I have lived through times of fear and times of hope. Of despair and of achievement. I have seen our government at its best, but today I fear that we see our government at its worst.
Robert Byrd
#66. Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
Ayn Rand
#67. On a basic level, he had seen first-hand how his government used the element of fear to accomplish its objectives; the same element of fear that had been used as an excuse to engage its huge war machine in conflicts for the profits of America's oligarchy.
Kenneth Eade
#68. Fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.
Louis D. Brandeis
#69. No government should be without critics. If its intentions are good then it has nothing to fear from criticism.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. A majority of all defectors who voted Labour in 2010 but for a different party in 2015 said Ed Miliband had helped push them to another party. For those switching to the Tories, the second biggest reason was the fear that a Labour government would spend and borrow too much.
Michael Ashcroft
#71. I fear Washington and centralized government more than I do Moscow.
Barry Goldwater
#72. Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed ... Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone.
Mahatma Gandhi
#73. On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#74. The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.
William Howard Taft
#75. Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.
Douglas MacArthur
#76. Government of limited power need not be anemic government. Assurance that rights are secure tends to diminish fear and jealousy of strong government, and by making us feel safe to live under it makes for its better support.
Robert H. Jackson
#77. When you're in government, of course, you have protection and you have people who are looking out for your wellbeing, but you can't live in a state of fear. If you do, you're not going to do your job very well and you're going to give yourself high blood pressure, which probably isn't worth it.
Condoleezza Rice
#78. Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.
Nhat Hanh
#79. Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.
Gouverneur Morris
#80. The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer
When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
Thomas Paine
#81. Without popular fear, no government would endure more than twenty-four hours.
Robert Higgs
#82. But there's nothing wrong with being scared. I think everyone's a little scared. Even the government.
David Patneaude
#83. Government owes its birth to the necessity of preventing and repressing the injuries which the associated individuals had to fear from one another.
Guillaume-Thomas Francois Raynal
#84. What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.
Alexander Berkman
#85. The primary method by which governments increase their control is by creating fear.
Charles Eisenstein
#86. Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.
John Updike
#87. When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#88. There are times when the voice of repining is completely drowned out by various louder voices: the voice of government, the voice of taste, the voice of celebrity, the voice of the real world, the voice of fear and force, the voice of gossip.
Alice Oswald
#89. I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.
Edward Snowden
#90. Any big organization can be subverted by governments or multinational special interests. They have the resources to cast doubt and fear over any group they feel threatened by.
Arlo Guthrie
#91. Major flaw in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.
Frank Herbert
#92. Some people are good only because they are afraid of punishment. These justify why we need government
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#93. I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.
Joe Biden
#94. They think the government shows people everything - how to work, study, eat, sleep and that's it. They are afraid of change. They do not understand that if you want to do something, you should do it. You are free, people, free!
Anton Krotov
#95. Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.
P. J. O'Rourke
#96. When we were scared about 9/11, we federalized the airport security, we spent millions for body armor for dogs in Ohio. All that over-reaction comes from fear and government - bad combination.
John Stossel
#97. The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.
Abigail Adams
#98. One thing I fear, that you Americans will do the same thing that you did after the last war. I mean that you will pull out of here and leave Europe, then Russia will have her way. Private enterprise and individual rights will be lost just as much as under a Nazi government. Frightful!
Hjalmar Schacht
#99. Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self-defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that.
Jane Addams
#100. I take seriously the concerns that voters are expressing. There's a lot of disappointment, fear, even anger, among people who believe that the economy has failed them, their government has failed them, politics has failed them. They have every right to be concerned.
Hillary Clinton
